


will end in fire

by ghost_lingering



Category: Eight Days of Luke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-04 05:43:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_lingering/pseuds/ghost_lingering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a burnt out match at the end of summer</p>
            </blockquote>





	will end in fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mazoku](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mazoku).



> [written for Yuletide 2004](http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/archive/10/willend.html) Posted here for safe keeping.

_some say the world will end in fire_  
some say in ice  
from what i've tasted of desire  
i hold with those who favor fire

i.

The authorities say that the mini is totaled, though Astrid can't bring herself to care. She can't even muster any kind of indignation when she hears the ladies at the church talking:

"--they say that there was drinking involved, you know."

"Drinking? You mean the boy? The one driving? Alan?"

"No, it was the other boy, David."

The drinking, of course, wasn't on Alan's part or even David's. It was the bus driver, hired by a local church to take Sunday school students to London to see a Christmas pageant, or possibly The Christmas Pageant, Astrid isn't sure.

"David and Alan, were they...?"

"Well, no one ever _talked_ about it, it was all very low key, but..."

"Tsk, such a shame; they seemed like such nice boys too."

The church is hot and her sweater is making her neck itch. Astrid doesn't know why they have to have the reception at the church--she and David had never gone--but Alan's mum insisted that their "sons" have a proper burial, as if the dead cared what happened to their bodies once they were gone. Astrid had scoffed at the idea, even stood strong that David was to be cremated, but she couldn't say no to a joint Memorial service, not when Alan was the first person David was close to in years. The gossiping women know nothing, with their condescending whispers they can't imagine how relieving it was the first she saw Alan make David smile. She knows David hadn't been exactly happy, but it was the closest he ever got.

"David, yes, that's his mother over there isn't it? Isn't she awfully young?"

"No, no that's the _cousin_. They ran off when he was still too young to know his own options. There was a scandal about the money or some such, though Mr and Mrs Fry always assured everyone that they were the ones on the up and up."

"Oh, that Mr Fry, he always was a bit on the trusting side you know. I never did understand why she put up with him the way she did."

Astrid's not mother _or_ cousin to David, and she doesn't want to try to explain to these women that she and David saved each other. After that summer, with the not quite memories that they both had, there was a loss they couldn't quite articulate and emotion that neither could define. It was the laughter in the wind and the sound of a boy's pranking and it tasted like the burnt out match at the end of summer.

The women keep talking, and their tongues start to look like flames and their eyes burning coals and the church smells as acrid as a fire and Astrid can't stand there any longer. Without even grabbing a coat, she pushes out the door, past Alan's mum, and into the grey fog of winter.

ii.

You left to go to sleep, but you never closed your eyes. When you felt the flick of a match on Monday you wrapped your arms around your body and didn't move, thinking that in the end it would be better for everyone, now they knew your real name. Staying away would mean, come Ragnarok, they might be spared. You forgot to remember that by the final battle they might already be dead.

So, you sat in a corner of the world and you watched the people move like flames along the platform, rocking a pain that will never stop.

It is still there, now, moving through your bones like slow venom, burning the tracks of your blood vessels, contracting around you like the metal entrails of your dead child. It is the timeless poison, the nameless wound, the ever present hiss of a dying fire.

If you were a ghost, you would feel no pain, but you're not a ghost--you're a god and very much alive. You're a god and fucking rutting bloody _hell_, but there are scars that will never fade no matter how many years go by, because it doesn't matter if you're out, if your arms no longer are raised above your head, and your fingers no longer clench and tremble on the rim of a too small bowl.

There are some prisons you can never escape, that live on in cavities and the back of your tongue; some crimes that will never be as horrendous as the guilt conjured up to bear down over the centuries. It is the mistletoe you don't understand. Too young? Well nothing is too young to die, and that should have been their marker. The gods knew your tricks and it seems to you like they left an opening, but for all you think it was planned, they still grieved to bring him back. You also grieved, but for a different reason.

When you were innocent and so carefree, before the gods and the magic and the twist in your heart, you were cold and scared and young. You never had enough to eat and the bread was the bread you stole to put on your mother's table. You are the god of the common people by the hearth, because you are the only god who knows what it is like to coax a colicky child to bed when the wind blows harsh through the cracks of a house. You are the only one who has had to depend on fire for survival.

Baldur was loved by all for his kindness and his wisdom, but at the end of the day you were the god people depended on. You were wicked and fun and necessary and no other god could claim that. You killed Baldur for jealously, yes, but also because, starving in winter, he would be at a loss for what to do.

So. You killed him to prove a point. A passing one, a vain one, a stupid one, but a point never-the-less. You used to think people over reacted. Now, you just want to die yourself and fade away, try to heal those scars that ache in the middle of the night when you're awake and watching shadows dance on the tracks. Now, you think you might have done Baldur a favor.

You're a god, and you aren't supposed to die until Ragnarok, but, then again, you weren't supposed to be released until Ragnarok either. But you refuse to think of David. Instead, you wonder what it would take to be able to visit your daughter one last time, for all time. She had the best tea ever. It was as warm as flame and it tasted like a slow burning fire.

iii.

When David was seventeen and other boys his age started to pick up smoking, he and Alan were elected co-captains of the Wallsey Island cricket team. Cricket was practically the only thing David thought about after that summer when he was twelve--cricket and making Astrid smile. (They were the only things that didn't remind him of his dreams. Sea shells and crows and flaming red hair that appeared whenever he closed his eyes.) So, he worked hard and kept his head down, and tried to lead the team as best he could.

It turned out to be a good mix, him and Alan. Alan was one of the boys, a definite leader of the pack. He was always surrounded by people, laughing and telling jokes, punching each other's arms. Alan seemed like the obvious choice for a captain, so much so that outsiders never understood why the team had also elected David--David who was so strange and quiet, _standoffish_, they muttered. But the boys had a respect for David that Alan would never be able to replicate, too much one of the guys to ever be truly someone to obey. David, however, fair and just distanced enough from the crowd, was looked at with near awe, and listened to with a fascination bordering on disturbing. His strategies were brilliant and his own play near flawless.

That year had been a good year, ranking third (higher than any year before or since), and having fun besides. David even felt close enough to his teammates to laugh on occasion and slip in a few jokes. Astrid had come to many of his matches, cheering from the sidelines, her face splitting down the middle when they scored. It was David's main challenge in life, making Astrid smile, because she always seemed so sad, and he never knew what to do about it. But when they both discovered (to their surprise) that she actually like watching the matches, not just as an almost parent supporting her almost child, but truly liked to see him play, that's when he started to swing harder and run faster. Because when she smiled he smiled and for a while each forgot the fact that they usually didn't have any kind of emotion.

But there was more to playing cricket than winning and making Astrid smile, because that was the year that David started to notice the other boys in the locker rooms when they stripped off their cricket whites, showing their curved backs, pimply and pale, streaked with sweat after a match. There was a musk there that never quite washed away in the showers and whenever someone brushed past him he instinctively straightened.

As the season progressed, Alan was the worst. He'd sit thigh to thigh with David on the benches, talking cricket, and all David would notice was the way Alan bit his tongue when nervous, the way his hair stuck to his forehead, and the way his nose scrunched up when he blinked his eyes. Soon David was dreaming about more than red hair.

At night David would lay awake in his bed, pajamas pushed down to his knees, looking directly at the shadows playing on the ceiling, trying not to think about the burning beneath his hand. Instead he tried to focus on cricket, bat beneath his hands, running until his legs cramped. With his heels digging into the bed, his teeth biting painfully into his bottom lip, he'd close his eyes, mindlessly panting--_fire, fire_\--before he came.

After the last practice, Alan cornered David on the pitch and kissed him. It was messy and too wet, but a kiss. Alan pulled back after a moment and David blinked his eyes. David had always thought his first kiss would be a brand, but it was only awkward and cold. He leaned forward to kiss back anyway.

iv.

"Bally, dear, would you put on a pot?" Helen's voice is soothing, and motherly, and Bally goes to obey.

There is a glow here, of warmth and comfort, like a mother's cocoa, or being curled in a blanket before a fire on a cold night. Most steer away from this place, most think it a punishment to trickle downwards and be forgotten. But the people here know the truth, and they don't forget, and there is a peace that the world above them searches for, but cannot find.

They are the dead people, and it suits them well.

Bally (Baldur for the living) sets the table and pours the tea. The new arrival looks shell shocked.

"Where's Alan?" the boy asks. Bally walks back into the kitchen and listens as Helen gently speaks to him, laying a hand on his arm and looking into his eyes.

Bally is familiar with what happens next, though in recent years there has been less need, as fewer and fewer people arrive here to spend their after-lives. People go to the underworld they belong to after all, and not many people believe in these old stories anymore, even if they do exist. Bally feels for the boy who will not see his friend Alan again, Alan who must have traveled to a different ending, following a different belief.

Still, there is something about the boy, a flame perhaps, a touch of Loki about him, which, of course, must be what sent him here. Bally smiles. Loki, now that would make things interesting. Bally misses Loki, misses what trouble Odin and Loki dragged him into, Thor watching on and laughing. It's odd, he supposes, that he misses the one who arranged his death, but then again, it was only everyone else who was angry when he died. Indeed, he himself was relieved. To be that loved? To live that long? In the end Loki did him a favor, whether he was trying to or not.

He looks up at the clocks. There are many of them down here, one for each resident from the day they died. There are hourglasses that never run out of sand, sun dials that never see clouds, even a water clock that doubles as their indoor plumbing system. The boy's clock looks to be a pocket watch, ticking time as it exists in England.

Across the room is Bally's own clock, mahogany and tall enough to reach the ceiling. A grand father clock. It still counts the hours from Asgard, counts the days and years and eons from when he died. Some days he sits in front of it just to hear its precise ticking, back and forth, steadily marking time. Out there he'd be surrounded by people who want want want want want but here, Helen wraps blankets around shoulders and pushes tea into hands. She gives, asking for nothing in return.

She is the mother here, her bones strong as iron and thick, even after all her years. She is a woman whose back will never break, a woman who will still grow sunflowers when her time is nearly up. Only her time will never be up, because beyond Ragnarok she is the only one without a well planed death. Fitting, really, since she'd only just come back here. It is her life, to care for the no longer living and those in her care love her for it.

She is Hel, like he is Baldur, a title from the living. Those here have taken to calling her Helen, because the name is beautiful and because she is also. She is beautiful because she makes tea for the crying, and draws her arms around the weary. In Norwegian, after all, Hell is the word for happiness.

v.

Outside the church the wind is biting cold and she can't feel her hands and for the first time in ages she longs for a cigarette. She doesn't carry them in her pockets anymore, but there is a book of matches lying on the sidewalk, tossed aside, perhaps, or lost by someone passing by. She picks them up and lifts her hand, readying herself to strike one. It can't be more fucked up than burying a boy who wasn't quite her son on Christmas.

When the flame appears, her laughter is as high and hysterical as the wind.

vi.

You have been living in the London underground, for no other reason than you hate the smell. It is the same smell from the cave with your son's guts wrapped round your neck, the same smell from the bowl you held in your hands, the same smell of your ex-wife's tears as she watched you scream. (She didn't leave you during the imprisonment--it was once you'd gotten out, that she looked at you, kissed your cheek, told you she'd mended your clothing, and left).

It is bitter cold, but you start fires in the heaps of garbage and laugh as the authorities evacuate the area. You make sure they never see you in the ruckus, and, under the newspapers and the plastic, you drink a different kind of fire, hidden inside a paper bag, and laugh-cry yourself to sleep.

The people walk by and walk by and you ignore the pagan music that is now playing on repeat. No one watches you, except the pagan women coaxing you into their church basements. One day, one looks down at you and says: "Merry Christmas". You move to turn away from her, when suddenly you feel it--the flick of an unexpected match.

You're gone before you remember that you were going to stay away. Back on the platform the lady probably blinks, but you are no longer next to her. Instead, you're standing in front of a church in the bitter cold, watching a woman you used to know look for a cigarette to smoke.

vii.

David is twenty three when he dies. It is six years after Alan kissed him, cricket bats still in their hands. It is eleven years since he and Astrid started living on their own and since Luke said: "I have to sleep now, it's urgent" and then never came back, even when David lit book after book of matches on that first Monday Luke was well and truly free. Since then David hasn't been near fire.

The woman's tea tastes like cinnamon and she smiles gently at him. Her face is not so scary now, as when he first came, both the young and old sides look kind. She reminds him of Astrid.

"There now, feeling better?" She sounds like she is laughing, like she is sharing some secret just between them.

"Yes, ma'am." He still feels shy around her, around her large house with so many blankets, and rooms, and fires. It's the fires that make him most jumpy.

"Now, don't you call me ma'am, alright? Helen will do just fine. Now, let's see if we can get you a bed so you can rest after your trip here."

Trip. David knows it was more than a Trip. It was dying, the bus hitting them as they were driving down the road in Astrid's old car. They had been talking about Christmas. In a way David is relieved. Alan was his boyfriend, but he never knew what things he couldn't say, or who any of Alan's sisters where. Six years and David always felt like they were having two different conversations.

The room that the woman--Helen, her name is Helen--leads him to is small but cozy. The bed looks soft and the lights are dim and there is a fire burning in the corner. He takes a step back.

She looks at him looking at the flames, and she smiles. She definitely looks like Astrid now, sad and a little lost.

"Don't worry David; he never comes to visit me. Before Bally, yes, but after... I think he's ashamed to see his children."

David doesn't know what to make of Helen's words.

"Oh, just ignore me, I'm an old women, remember? I love my father and always will. Just go to sleep now, love, and don't worry." She smoothes down David's hair and kisses his head, "Sleep tight."

All David can think to do is reach up and touch her face, "But you're not old, half of you is younger than me."

She smiles and waves him in his room, "I'll wake you when it's time for supper."

viii.

"Here's a cigarette, Astrid."

"Luke?"

"Who were you expecting?"

"I, well. You. I just didn't think you'd actually come is all. I half thought I made you up. To deal with everything or some nonsense."

"Deal? What? No, everyone thinks things like that sometimes. Like thinking I made you and David up--what? What's wrong? Is there something wrong with David?"

ix.

Astrid is far away from the church by the time the people start to file out. She imagines the first thing they notice is the body lying in the street. She knows it's there, though she hadn't seen it, only heard the screech of tires on the asphalt. Luke had asked her, begged her really, to hit him, but she didn't have the stomach, so he told her to leave and that he'd trick someone else into doing it.

So, now, she's driving down the highway in a new car that she wishes she'd bought a long time ago and she's getting out. Someday, according to Luke, she'll meet up with them all in Hell, or Heaven, or whatever the place that old dead Norwegians go to, but for now she's flooring it and making plans to finally figure out how she wants to live her life. She'd feel guilty, but Luke promised to take care of David, and he has a way of making her trust him, even when she thinks she shouldn't.

The radio is on and tomorrow she'll be a hundred miles away. She lights a cigarette and smoke fills the car.

x.

You still look like a beggar and your daughter is looking at you like she's never seen you before and fucking Baldur is there and it's a fucking mess. Why you decided to visit Hel _permanently_ you'll never figure out, because--

"Papa?" And now she's crying and you're crying and you haven't hugged her in such a long time and you know you weren't always the best father (you were in a fucking _prison_ for centuries) but you love her you really do and she always makes the best tea.

She pulls back and looks at you, Baldur behind her smiling.

"It's nice to see you again Loki. I missed you."

He missed...? "It's Luke now." That's all you can think to say.

"Bally."

He smiles and you shake hands and for a wild moment all you can think is that your daughter has corrupted him.

"Papa, how long...?" Her eyes widen when she hears the flicker of a candle clock from the kitchen, and she doesn't talk.

"Well, it doesn't take that much effort to be hit by a car."

Bally laughs. "Does this mean we're calling Ragnarok off then? I don't think that your getting hit by a car was in the prophesies. Odin will be so disappointed."

You half smile and almost say the prophesies are a load of ashes anyway, what with David releasing you ahead of time, but you don't because you don't want to think about Odin, and how Odin's going to give you hell (metaphorically speaking) for dying. You need to find David. Hel is looking at you and if you didn't know her, you'd swear she was smirking.

"Do you want to see him? He's sleeping, but I'll let you in as long as you promise not to wake him up."

xi.

David is sleeping, dreaming that he can see Luke's doodles playing in the corners of the ceiling. Dreaming he can see Luke sitting on the foot of the bed. If he's honest, he's always been dreaming of Luke, of the fiery mess of hair. He dreams of Alan too, misses him, but it's different. Luke is fire, dangerous and unforgettable, the pain of losing him strong enough to keep him away from matches for eleven years. Alan was a friend, shag, and a co-captain, but not a lover, not really. The more David thinks about it, the more Alan was someone who was only there until something better came along. Something with red hair and an affinity for fire.

"Hey."

Something brushes his face and David can't tell whether or not it's a dream. "Is it time to eat yet?"

He begins to sit up, but a hand pushes him down, and he thinks he can definitely see doodles on the ceiling.

"Don't. No, don't. You should sleep."

"Is it urgent?" But it's definitely not a dream now, and he thinks he recognizes the voice and suddenly there is a body curled behind him.

"No," says the voice, flicking over his ear, "no, not urgent at all."

When David finally leans back and dreams, he's slowly burning and the most alive he's felt in years.

_this is the way the world ends_  
this is the way the world ends  
this is the way the world ends  
not with a war, but with a flicker


End file.
